


Lifted Up (1985)

by Tuiwil



Category: Banana Bus Squad
Genre: Angry themes, Fluff, Lifted Up (!985), M/M, Passion Pit - Freeform, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:59:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tuiwil/pseuds/Tuiwil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After hearing Lifted Up (1985) by Passion Pit in a grocery store, H2O Delirious gets an idea in regards to his friend, Cartoonz.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifted Up (1985)

The rain pelted the hood of Jonathan’s car, thick and dense with its weight, a heaviness that dragged on the man’s shoulders as his hands gripped his steering wheel until knuckles looked skeletal. He hadn’t thought to turn on the radio when he had stormed into the cramped space, a decision he had come to regret now, as his digits were too locked around the faux-leather that didn’t quite satisfy his need for it to be flesh. His blood was pumping loudly in his ears, almost as if it was draining from his cold extremities straight towards his head, but the red liquid that was banging out a cacophony of noise that reverberated in Delirious’ mind wasn’t right. He wished it was someone else’s and that it was seeping between fingers that started to lose all nerve feeling from the immediate pressure that was funneling his current rage. 

He knew he had to be stopped. The silence that was gradually stifling him was beginning to fray the edges of his mind, creating loose threads that unraveled with any miniscule amount of friction, hurtling thoughts into disarray. If he didn’t remove himself from this damn car, he knew that desires would take the reins, sadistically tugging at just the right strings to send Delirious into a rampage. His movements wouldn’t be his; eyes would burn fissures into anything in their path, hands would rake deep into breakable, fragile skin, tears would stream down heated cheeks, sizzling into vapor, arms would shake with burning fury, itching for ignition. Breaths become staggering for Jonathan who was begging for relief, wishing against all forces unholy to have consistency seep into his sputtering lungs. And this is why he pressed his right foot towards the floorboard, craziness filtering into his lilt that echoed into his bones. 

The asphalt of his driveway was a satiating sensation to his torn soul. Never would he have thought that pulling closer to his home would be a mist to the fires that fueled him. But he was still scorching in his seat, and he had to pry his fingers away from the wheel that stuck to his skin. He pulled in a frazzled inhale before he reached for his phone and shakily dialed the number of the only person who could bring any respite. The persistent ringing into his right ear had him grinding his teeth to a pulp, only to be punctuated by the slamming of his car door that had a little too much punch behind it. It wasn’t until he was jamming jangling house keys into his front door and forcing them away from the frame, that he heard such jarringly soft words. 

“What’s up, Jonathan? Why are you calling me at fucking 3:30 in the morning?” The words were groggy and tinged with concern, sending Jonathan into a tizzy as he attempted to scavenge coherent thoughts from his tattered mind. 

“She… She fucking cheated on me, Luke. And I was so close to ripping that… that guilty look from her fucking face, and I don’t even know how I managed to make it home, but now that I’m here I want to be back there and beating the asshole into the fucking ground,” Delirious rushed out from between quivering lips, fearing that if the words didn’t come immediately, then they would’ve tripped up along the way. 

“Fuck, Jon… Do you want me to come over there?”

A breathy sigh took form and Jonathan found a semblance of calm in his storm to concentrate on before responding, “No… No, I don’t trust myself around anyone right now. I’m still seething.” It hurt. It hurt to admit that he was coming undone and that he couldn’t even slow it enough to accept help from his friend. “Just… Talk to me. Tell me whatever. I don’t care right now. Just speak.”

It was with calculated breath that Cartoonz let go his worry, let it fall to the wayside, and bled airiness into his voice as he spoke about his day, the new Suicide Squad trailer, the punny joke Brock had made several weeks back at some dinner after a day of E3, just anything that could soothe his friend’s troubled mind. And Jonathan just sunk into his couch, conversing in small patches with the one person who had never let him down, eyes remaining unfocused on the small sparks of lightning flashing on the distant horizon past his glass doors, and body slumping in tune with the vibrations of the rolling thunder creeping up under him. The talk dimmed down when the darkness of that turbulent night did as well, a slowly approaching sun softly uncovering the pastel colors of early morning that reflected in cool eyes that had long since harbored red. 

The pace of their conversation began to drawl to a crawl, laziness and sleep painting their voices and rough grumbles interceding between half-thought-out words. Jonathan pulled himself off his couch that had become his little haven whilst getting lost in Luke’s voice and blearily dragged himself upstairs towards a real bed that would offer him full rest. As he ascended, he bade his goodbye, “Thanks again for this, dude. I’m gonna head to bed now.”

“Nah man, you know I’m always here for you. And we can hang when we both wake up, ok? Help you keep her off your mind.” Delirious’ head swam, dizziness catching him off balance as he reached the top of his stairs, gripping onto the rail for reassurance. He was unsure of whether the onslaught came from his tiredness, the slight mention of yet another person who had managed to crush his heart, the sentiment that Luke uttered with no hesitation or thought and all conviction, or some combination of those things thereof. 

“Ah… yeah that sounds like a plan. I guess I’ll see you when I wake up,” Jonathan chuckled out, finally collapsing on his steadying mattress. He pressed what he hoped was the end call button on his phone before tossing it to some unknown location amongst shuffled sheets. A crack surfacing in the stucco of his ceiling caught his gaze, fixating his thoughts on the man he knew would be hitting the pillows just a few miles away. It was memories of simpler times and unforgettable moments with his oldest friend that portrayed themselves on the back of Delirious’ eyelids before sleep conveyed these recollections in his own dreams, allowing minutes to slip into hours and grief to cascade into a fuzziness that was uncatchable. And damn if that hadn’t been one of the best rests that Jonathan had had in a long while. 

=^.^=

It happened at a fucking grocery store. Jonathan had been wandering amongst the produce, thoughts swaying from what ingredients he needed for his dinner that night to the guy who had spent the majority of the last several weeks fending off Jonathan’s own demons. He wasn’t even certain how the kitschy music from the speakers overhead had broken through to his brain, which was over brimming with randomly bouncing thoughts, but he figured it must’ve been attributed to that one line in the chorus, “1985 was a good year; the sky broke apart and you appeared.” He couldn’t help his mind as it honed in on Luke, remembering that his birthday was just two years before his own in 1987. “1985 was a good year, because that was the year that my happiness was born,” Jonathan relaxed into his stance, finding solace with that notion.

But why was Luke so heavily on his mind to begin with? That query had fished his breath right out of his throat, leaving the ocean of air that filled his lungs completely drained. 

He leaned further against his shopping cart, foot up on the bar above the back wheels, and his hands began absentmindedly playing with the tomato that would have simply gone straight into the cart had it not been for one, simple song. Delirious’ eyes weren’t focused on anything in particular, but they sparkled of ideas drifting just beyond, questions of why Cartoonz had always been the one that had managed to capture his attention in a more-than-friendly way, especially in the bouts of time when he was living life solo. He thought back to other relationships, whether with a guy or a girl, and realized that no matter how they ended up falling apart, Jonathan always found himself mentally falling back into Luke. It almost became a force of habit now, to retreat to a little oasis within the warmest recesses of his mind that never sheltered the same environment save for his best friend who was a constant, his constant. And he had never pondered why until now. 

“Excuse me, I just need to grab an avocado,” the simple request sliced into his thoughts, stinging him back to reality, to the produce section of the Harris Teeter® that he was in. 

He flashed a crooked smile at the petite woman looking up at him expectantly, before reaching out and shaking her shoulders and jubilantly hooting, “I’m in love with my best friend!”

She seemed a little taken aback, but grinned regardless at his cheery nature and retorted with a, “I’m glad that tomato helped you figure that out, sweetie,” before walking off with her cart and avocado, passing glances back to a young man who was so dreamily euphoric that she wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if she heard the comm system up above demand for some poor worker to come clean up some ridiculous mess made by this love struck fool’s somewhat maniac skips and twirls. But that’s the effect that Delirious’ mood was having; he was causing passerby to detour around erratic movements and look back to only smugly shake their heads at the image of what everyone aspired to have: happiness. The smiles exchanged were just as plentiful as the richly colorful harvest of fruits and vegetables all around. The smiling suns on cereal boxes and milk jugs weren’t nearly as blinding as the white teeth Jonathan was flashing to all. A little girl was magnetized to Delirious as soon as he rounded the corner of the candy isle, and he chuckled graciously before initiating a dance that looked more like limbs flailing than actual, polished moves. She didn’t care, however, as she fell in step with this unknown man who was handing out positivity on a platter, host to these peoples’ trek into better days. Her father witnessed the lack of inhibition that wound up around these two in a whirlwind, and it was when the song had ended and his little girl had stopped dancing, fancying giggling instead, that he thanked Jonathan for the commotion he had initiated that was sure to unfurl a wave of complexly simple smiles in them both for days to come. 

Delirious finally pulled out his phone, impressed at the epiphany this magical song had guided him towards, and typed the lyrical line into the search bar of his web browser. The hit came up to reveal to him that the band was Passion Pit, and he chewed on that name as he entered the queue to one of the available registers so he could pay and get home. “Passion Pit, huh? It suits their sound for sure,” he mumbled as he shoved the phone back into his pocket, just in time for him to start unloading his bundles of food onto the conveyor belt. He hummed as the beeping of the scanner peppered his tunes, each passing second getting him closer to the exit and to the plan that had begun formulating in his mind. His nerves left him a bit edgy, but the cheeriness that his recent revelation had cascaded down upon him, was enough to shield his most vulnerable depths of his mind from those cruel intentions. It was almost as if he were drawing strength from the fact that he found serenity from his rock, that he found it stabilizing and secure rather than discomfortingly stiff. He would just have to hope that he wouldn’t become trapped by his rock and the situation he was throwing himself into, and that whatever happened later tonight, Luke remained the stone that retained his warm serenity whenever Jonathan needed to be enveloped in him. 

Delirious’ car was a blur in the lines of traffic, uplifting notes flitting out of an open window as he let the stifling summer breeze sink into his skin. He saw storm clouds billowing to the west, trying desperately to shield the earth below from the sun. But where the patches of light broke through, brightness bloomed in a ray of colors, smoothing shadows into green grasses and tinging greys into untainted whites. The myriad of shades splaying out before the wheels of Jonathan’s car overwhelmed his heart, making him feel as if he was living in a painting so breathtaking, which is why he vowed to stitch Luke permanently into the very fibers of that canvas alongside him. He just had to convince his friend first to allow Jonathan near him, needle and thread in hand. And he had just the idea to persuade Luke that he was an artist trusted enough to create their masterpiece.

=^.^=

Luke parked in front of Jonathan’s house for their fourth dinner together this week. His friend had promised that there would be burgers, a proposal he couldn’t refuse, especially when it involved the company of Delirious. What surprised him, however, was the bright, neon-orange sticky note plastered to his front door, just over the peephole, reading “Find all 10 of my friends ;)” in his friend’s awful chicken scratch that seemed to have been improved on slightly, if only a sign that Jonathan actually took his time to write out the words. All Cartoonz could do in the moment was snatch the small paper up in his hand and go inside his second home. The normality of everything inside threw him off a tad, as he really began to get curious about this scavenger hunt he was sent on. 

He saw Delirious out back by his grill, wearing that damn apron with the cartoony-styled rooster and cat heads on it. And it was his evil, little smirk that he offered Luke when he heard the back door slide open that had Luke glaring right back. “What the hell is this about?” The words came out more biting than he would’ve liked, but he held the note up, in between his thumb and forefinger, anyway, which only prompted a bigger smirk from the perpetrator.

Jonathan mimicked zipping his lips shut, locking them tight, and throwing away the key before turning back towards his grill, suspiciously infatuated with the burgers that were sizzling delightfully on its surface. It wasn’t so much as feeling defeated than it was curious, that had Cartoonz heading back inside in search of bright squares. He headed for the kitchen first, feeling as if the place where Jonathan’s favorite thing was stored would be the place his friend would think of first to hide a note. He wasn’t wrong as he found one deep inside the fridge with “How many days went to waste?” scrawled across it. What was that supposed to mean? How many days were wasted on what? The line had only prompted more questions than it had answered, and he couldn’t figure out for the life of him what Jonathan was doing here. 

His legs gained momentum, equally intrigued as their owner as to what was going on, and within a matter of five minutes they had helped Luke find three more sticky notes, each reading “But I guess I’ll just wait a bit longer”, “I took your hands and pulled you down”, and “I fight so hard and come back beaten”. The confusion he had harbored earlier was nothing compared to the jumbled mess his mind constructed now, desperately trying to find some kind of pattern or answer in the letters that etched themselves into Luke’s vision. He reasoned that since he had only found four of the accursed things, he didn’t have enough evidence to start piecing together whatever message Delirious was sending him. So he ventured off once again, looking in more obscure places than before. 

It took him another five minutes just to find two more, one of which was on the inside of a medicine cabinet while the other underneath a pillow on the couch in the living room. The first spoke the words “The sky broke apart and you appeared”, while the second displayed “One day you came out of nowhere”. Were these about Luke? The thought zoomed in front of him, slow enough to be pondered on, but too quick to chase any further with confidence. He became frantic, needing to know what his friend was saying about him, and why it was of enough importance to do something as childishly adorable as this to convey it to him. 

The southern man barely even registered the chaos he was generating in Jonathan’s house, nick knacks becoming toppled onto their sides and sheets being ruffled against headboards. Luke managed to discover one note between stacked plates that no longer found their home in a cupboard, reading “1985 was a good year”. His birth year? But why? The next came from the inside of a framed picture of the two resting on Delirious’ nightstand and it revealed “I won’t lie, I knew you’d belong here”. All of these words started constricting Luke’s throat, breathing rationally a thing of the past. He couldn’t be entirely sure, but it seemed as the hints were pointing him to a particular thought, and it was hard to swallow. “And now all of the clouds are combining” read the second to last sticky note, found in the front cover of the book resting on the coffee table. Luke chanced a peek at Jonathan who was starting to get plates ready and burgers constructed. He seemed oblivious of his agitated friend who only needed one more orange note before he could confront these questions once and for all.

Cartoonz thought back to all the previous locations in hopes of reasoning where this last fucking paper could be. The garage. He half ran into the hallway leading to the place he knew would be hiding his salvation from the slight insanity that had dug its nails into the fleshiest parts of his mind. He flung the door open, heading straight for the toolbox and its multitude of drawers, hurling them open and coming up disappointed. The cabinets were his next victim, doors thrown ajar and contents shuffled about helplessly. Frustration started settling in, gnawing at his twitching fingers whose engagements were becoming clumsily ungraceful. It was just as he thought he glossed over every inch of the space and had switched gears to other possible, unsearched rooms in this house that he saw the infernal thing staring at him from next to the light switch, mocking his pleading eyes. “Now the rain and the thunder are clashing” looked up at him, a frozen man who was trying to piece it all together in quick succession before realizing he would now have permission to ask Jonathan of his intentions. 

So in that second, Luke had collected himself and headed for the living room one last time, to the patio on which his friend was sitting with food all prepared and bobbing along to what must’ve been music playing from the speakers next to him. Luke wrung his hands together once before pulling the door open and confronting the lean man in his eyesight. “Care to explain the meaning behind all of this?”

Jonathan turned around and reached out for the pile of stickys in Cartoonz’s hand, ensuring that he had found all ten before replying simply with, “Come sit and listen.” Luke was a little baffled by the unrevealing response he had received but had presumed that he would get his answers soon. He walked towards the second lounge chair, food momentarily forgotten as he leaned back and let his eyes wash out over the magnificent sunset that was hugging the horizon while concentrating on the song playing nearby. It was the chorus that had caught his attention, lines popping back from his memories, and he looked over quite keenly, letting Delirious know that he had recognized all of the clues as lyrics and that he was now expecting some sort of explanation.

“You know, I was pretty fucking dumb to have never realized that I fell in love with you slowly over the years.” Jonathan had spun back towards the horizon, drinking in the colors with his skin and rewarding himself with a tiny chuckle meant only for himself for deducing what should’ve been so obvious. “All those relationships and I was never satisfied. Not until I became comfortable with the idea of being single again and returned to spending more time with you. I guess I never got out of the thought of us just being friends, because it was so easy to stay that way. To stay friends and always have your support and never risk the thing that was most important to me.” He looked back towards Luke, praying against everything hellish that his eyes wouldn’t hold animosity or disgust. And oh, was he pleasantly surprised. 

Mirth carved Luke’s features, pulling up the skin at the corner of his eyes and coaxing the furl of his lips and tinging the fullness of his cheeks. But his words were the most endearing thing to come about from this process, the words that confirmed a future of continuity, of times that really wouldn’t differ all too much from the past. “I’m glad you finally came to your senses, Jon.” And his lips were the ribbon to top this gift off, melding all too perfectly to the other pair, firmly, finally, connecting two people who had always been prone to sticking together more often than not. And it was the disappearance of the sun that had marked the end of one era of friendship and allowed an opportunity to paint their own eternity to arise.

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s a little something for all of you Delitoonz lovers out there. I’m pretty satisfied with how this turned out, especially for something that started off as an idea that wasn’t fully fleshed out. I really kind of just jumped right in and hoped for the best. As for my next chapter of Going Home, it’s coming. I’ll be working on it in the upcoming days so that you guys can hopefully expect it by the end of the week, because I am really excited to continue on with that little fic.
> 
> Last but certainly not least, I must talk about this band, Passion Pit. They’re crazy upbeat (which you would’ve picked up from listening to this song) in terms of their sounds and rhythms. What makes them interesting, however, is that the lead singer is actually a huge spokesperson for depression and bipolar disorder, which is something that influences their songs and performances a lot. If you actually listen to some of their songs, they hint at some pretty heavy themes with the lyrics, especially their older stuff. I find it very refreshing to have those dark lyrics that you want to relate to with the really uplifting sounds that actually help you get out of whatever rut you’re in. So if any of that sounds appealing to you, I definitely suggest that you go check out some of their other pieces. And with that, I hope you all have a wonderful day/afternoon/evening. Remember that I love you all.
> 
> P.S. There is the smallest of video game references thrown in here, and if you can find it, you get all the kudos.


End file.
